Welcome back to Cover Snark!
Kiki: Hey friends, have we considered moving to shelter and NOT standing in the middle of the road while a tornado heads towards us?
Elyse: Pretty fucking relaxed about that tornado.
Sarah: It’s the tornado of love don’t you get it.
It’s going to bring them even closer together. By smashing them with debris.
Tara: They are letting fate decide!
Sneezy: I need them to not with this “first characters to die in a horror movie” energy.
Elyse: Deez are my teefs.
Amanda: When we can see our cats’ teeth peeking out while they’re sleeping, we call them Teefer Sutherlands.
Sarah: I had another root canal this week (my fifth this year – one more and I get a free one!) and because I need extra anaesthetic, this is literally what I was doing all day. Can I feel my face? No? Still no. Is my nose moving? No? Ok. Am I drooling? Ugh, yes.
Sneezy: Root canal is hot now. You heard it here first, folks!!!
From MegCat: I have questions. Where is her butt? Is she kneeing him in the balls? How come both of them look so effortless in what would be a physically challenging pose to hold for both of them? How long until they both fall over? Should I really have looked at this cover just fresh off a workout when my brain was still in “what muscles should I be working?” mode…
Sarah: First, they’re going to fall over. No idea which direction but gravity will win.
Second, my physical therapist would be HORRIFIED at how they’re treating his lumbar region. Third, is that Olivia Wilde?
Elyse: His hamstrings must be hella loose.
Sarah: Or his ankles are in cement?
Lara: Her legs don’t seem long enough, somehow.
Sneezy: Is she kneeing him in the balls?
Sarah: It really looks like that’s the case – maybe that’s why he’s half bent forward? Nailed him right in the pool noodle.
From Leslie – who designs covers: When I design book covers I always reduce them to thumbnail size to make sure they read well because that is how most of us are going to first encounter a new book, particularly via booksellers’ newsletters. Here’s a fail in that regard.
At first I thought the gal’s varicose veins had ruptured. Then I thought she had red tinfoil wrapped around her legs. After I figured out those red wrinkled things are boots, I got confused about the right boot tip. Is that a cloven hoof?
And eeeuwww—ass crack alert! I like a shapely male tush as much as the next woman, but even on a good body an ass crack is not edgy or sexy, it’s just an ass crack. In that regard, this cover offers up a “2-for” with those droopy jeans, the ever predictable result of in an ass-crack situation. Shout out to the gal wrapped around our hero for doing her heroic best to pull his pants up.
One last rant: I am so over grey bodies on covers when served up with a hit of color. I’d have to look through my graphic trick book but I think this is trick no. 32—a hard one to do well. Case in point: dead bodies with animate boots.
But those boots ain’t walking. I say cook ’m up and serve ’m since they seem more like raw steak than boots. I’ll take mine well done.”
Sarah: I can’t tell if the pants are going up or down, but her ankles and calves do look violently abused.
Also everything in the composition is pointing to the asscrack. Why?
Amanda: Meanwhile, I find his vertebrae very distracting.
Sneezy: Those look like heels…the pointy front makes me think the heel is the skinny stiletto kind.
Billy, I can’t f*ck now. . . We got cows!
I HOPE Bootsie is pulling those panys up, cuz if she’s pushing them down, that belt buckle’s gonna hurrrt.
Oops! That’s pants. stupid fat fingers.
Ooooo, I think Mr. Lockwood is unscrewing his head.
Twist of Fate: Plot twist (haha): The reason they’re standing there so calmly is that they know what we don’t: The smoke is from a passing locomotive just beyond the trees. And, thanks to the railway crossing, they need not worry about vehicular traffic on their half of the road.
Series: A Southern Storms Sweet Romance. Is there a different title for every state, featuring the local climate disaster? Here a tornado, over there a hurricane, in that corner heavy flooding?
Seriously, SBTB, we need a one-off review of Improbable Series Titles.
Becoming Illegible: I’m confused. Is the cover model contemplating becoming Mrs. Whatever? I realize some men do take their spouse’s name, but surely not with the “Mrs.” title?
Things Left Unsaid: You mean, like, where did he leave his shirt? I do need to give them credit, however, for letting her (and possibly even him?) be realistically barefoot. So many covers of this type would have her in spike heels, leaving us to wonder how on earth she crossed the sand.
Surrender Your Love: Raise your hand if at first glance you thought those were blood-dripping severed hands, raising mental associations with Titus Andronicus.
@Louise: Series: A Southern Storms Sweet Romance. Is there a different title for every state, featuring the local climate disaster? Here a tornado, over there a hurricane, in that corner heavy flooding?
Florida would be a whole series (sub-series? Spin off?) all by itself. We have all three. Along with the occasional wildfire. About the only disasters we don’t have are earthquakes and blizzards. And with climate change, I wouldn’t count the blizzards out.
I know I’m in the minority but I don’t mind the ass crack on “Surrender Your Love.” It’s just showing a bit more of a nice male ass. But those ?boots? did take me aback and I’m still not convinced it isn’t wrapping paper.
@Sandra: I don’t know where you are in Florida, but here in the Tampa area it’s supposed to be pretty close to freezing tonight! I’m thinking it’s time to move further south, like, you know the Equator! And we have had snow a few times in the past (not blizzard quantity yet) so it may be coming.
I think what offends me the most about Surrender Your Love is that they went to all the trouble to make the (terrible) boots pop, then covered it with writing in a similar color. The only other pop of color, as it happens.
@Karen H: Orlando — so just about the same. We just turned our heat on for the first time this year to burn the dust off. And it’ll be 80 again by this weekend. And last week we still having hurricanes off the coast.
Twist of Fate: They’re not worried because they’ve spotted the bad photoshop job pasting the funnel cloud onto the wrong kinds of surrounding clouds. And they’re facing away from the camera so we don’t see them smirking about it.
Those look like lady boots on Surrender Your Love , but the hand gripping the jeans seems to be missing some knuckles and joints (AI much?) and looks like a man hand to me (per SEINFELD, “not that there’s anything wrong with that”).
There is letting Fate decide and there is letting Darwin decide.
I agree that the vertebrae are very distracting in the last book. Is that a trilobite emerging from his back? Maybe it’s hungry and wants to eat the boots? Maybe this book isn’t in the genre we thought.
@Sandra @Karen H
How about the sinkholes? My Dad and his wife (Lake City) used to talk about someone’s Cadillac getting swallowed. creeped me out no end.
@PamG: Yes, sinkholes are a problem but they’re generally not particularly storm-related. They can be if there’s way too much rain and it saturates the ground but they also appear when it’s been dry. So, that’s why I didn’t bring them up in connection with the “Southern Storms” theme, though I did consider mentioning them as feeling similar to an earthquake (that I experienced living in California) if you happen to be close enough when the collapse happens.
@PamG: Lake City! My parents are in Fort White, but Lake City has the Publix.
re: Spit or Swallow. Book one has a LOT of sex and there are snake men, so definitely intentional.
Feedly wanted to know, “Is this post about fashion?” 😀
What are his arms doing in that last one? He is not holding her up, or even touching her as far as I can tell. She is holding on by her legs and one hand, which does not seem sustainable.
@batgirl Maybe that’s why his pants are sliding down: she’s holding on to them for dear life. But I do wonder what her other hand is doing.